The innkeeper of the Two Crowns is an old woman with a direct black gaze as she tells Jeyne, "We're low on oats, m'lady. We can barely feed the twenty guests we have right now."
Jeyne absently fingers her brooch as she peers around the first storey. Benches missing from tables. Rushes looking like they were hastily put together and strewn across the floor. A boy scrubbing something off a wall with a bewildered sort of desperation. The sheer dankness seeping from all over the inn's white stones and dark wood and bleary-eyed people.
"No oats to be found in the fields, m'lady," the innkeeper continues, her words curling around her firm tone. An accent vaguely similar to a Dornish trader Jeyne once met in Gulltown. "Only the dead in the fields. Even the fish in the river are dead."
Jeyne pulls down her hood and in a firmer tone, says, "Prepare the rooms in the third storey, if you would, goodwife. I have enough grain with me to feed my party. We will be staying for only one night."
With a wry twist to her lips, the innkeeper turns to lead Jeyne to the long wooden bar. "I've not been a wife for thirty years now, m'lady. Been running this place since."
"No?" Jeyne allows herself a smile. "So have I."
"M'lady looks no more than thirty, or thereabouts."
Close enough, Jeyne thinks. Last moon's turn, she has just turned two and thirty. She caresses the curve of her brooch.
The innkeeper raps her brown knuckles on the table, beckons over a young man who must be her son, and proceeds to relay instructions: rooms for Jeyne, her steward, her two ladies, and her guards, and care for their horses.
Glancing at the mottles of soot on the table, Jeyne settles on a rickety stool and plucks off her gloves. "You will find my steward in the yard unloading our things. He will give you grain to be cooked for our party. Porridge, perhaps, or for bread. Do you have eggs?"
"None, m'lady." The innkeeper clucks her tongue. "Chickens are dead, or stolen."
This inn at the crossroads, Jeyne muses, now at the crossroads of winter and the aftermath of a war. Jeyne looks at the innkeeper's weathered brown face, almost irreverent in its directness, and knotty fingers which still look like they have a firm grasp on things. For their stay in war-torn riverlands, Jeyne can appreciate these qualities of the innkeeper.
"The situation will start to look well, I promise you that," Jeyne tells her.
The innkeeper's lips only twitch. It may have been a smile. "Will my lady be wanting anything else? Whilst you wait?"
Her golden heart brooch is almost warm to her touch now, despite the cold of the journey. "No. My thanks."
Jeyne is used to waiting. For what seems like the first time, she is waiting for someone.
The letter found Jeyne in her solar, a moon ago.
It was a beautiful frosty morning at the Gates of the Moon. Breakfast had been Jeyne's favoured smoked salmon. There was a string of pearls weaved with Jeyne's dark hair. The four shell lamps were lighted, and there were lemon wedges daintily perched on a saucer beside a fresh pot of nettle tea. Jeyne's brushes, paints, and painting paper were all laid out for her as her cousin Lady Alyanna Royce read out the day's letters.
There might be a war, but you only turned two and thirty once.
"Lay the paper on the table, Lady Alyanna," Jeyne would say as each letter was opened, "so that I can see the signature." Jeyne would quickly read the letter from each bannerman before settling back to her painting and gesturing for Lady Alyanna to read out the letter for her.
So far Lady Alyanna had remained accurate in her readings. Jeyne appreciated that in her.
That day, Lord Redfort's subtle inquiries about marriage by way of barley portions was interrupted when a guardsman announced Maester Arden's presence.
"My lady Arryn," the old maester said, toadily shuffling across the room.
Jeyne kept on her steady brush strokes for verdant grass. "Yes?"
"My lady, here I have news regarding the war."
Jeyne put down her brush and reached for her hand cloth. She addressed Lady Alyanna with, "Tell the cook that I wish to dine on salmon later. Lemon cakes would be lovely as well."
When the doors had closed on Lady Alyanna, Jeyne stood up and squeezed a wedge of lemon over her cup. Maester Arden lay down the unopened letter by Jeyne's brushes. The seal on it was a direwolf.
Maester Arden was worrying his chain as he alternated his murky eyes between Jeyne and the letter. Jeyne kept her gaze on him as she finished her cup.
She neither liked nor disliked him just as she neither liked nor disliked most people in her life. They were either an ally to her as ruling lady of the Vale, or they were a harm to Jeyne and the Vale. Liking or disliking them was of no use. During the long years of her minority, friends and enemies kept exchanging faces. The only thing of use was to appreciate what each quality of them Jeyne could maneuver for herself.
"Open the letter, if you would, Maester Arden." Jeyne poured herself another cup. "Spread it over there so that we can read it together."
The letter was concise and rather old-fashioned in certain phrases. When Jeyne reached the bottom with Lord Cregan Stark's signature, she was absolutely assured that this was one of her best name day gifts yet.
Maester Arden looked dazed. "The fighting is over."
"So it seems." Jeyne picked up a plump wedge of lemon, and relished in the squeezing of it.
"The Targaryens are dead. Surely – and with two small children left, and frightened, well." He trailed off, and worried his chain again as he bent over the letter. "Oh, dear," murmured Maester Arden. "The Seven help us. Oh dear."
Oh, yes. Yes indeed.
Jeyne brought up the cup to her lips again. It wouldn't do to smile. After all, Queen Rhaenyra had been her half-sister's daughter.
Jeyne had been cautiously waiting for this. When she had received Jacaerys Velaryon and his dragon in the Eyrie, she did not know yet that she had been waiting for this. But Jeyne had still pledged fighting men for his mother's claim to the Iron Throne because it was like being thrust in front of a distorted mirror: here was a daughter and the rightful heir to her father's seat. Besides, Queen Rhaenyra had Arryn blood in her and her rule might be favourable to House Arryn.
But throughout Prince Jacaerys' short visit, Jeyne had sat on the seat of the Kings of the Mountain and the Vale and wondered how Queen Sharra Arryn must have felt. When a dragon landed outside your door you did not just say no. Only the Dornish were mad enough to do that, and amazingly enough Dorne remained unconquered. It must have been that scorching sun of theirs.
It was not until she had heard of the mob storming the Dragonpit and killing all the dragons in there that Jeyne realised, with a wild leap in her chest, that she had been waiting for this.
She had rushed from her bed to the balcony of her tower. All of the Vale hushed in the night had been spread before her, and with her hands tight on the cold white marble of the balcony, Jeyne had squinted into the darkness, wishing that she could've seen it and thinking: Let them burn one another.
From the Trident to the Honeywine, the smell of charred flesh and rotting blood had pervaded. No wonder winter had come. Too much had burned already.
Now let them burn one another. When the rest of Westeros had beasts of their own, winged beasts snorting out fire – then. Then they would see.
But now Lord Cregan Stark's letter was telling Jeyne that all of Westeros had to contend on level ground again, which was just as good.
Jeyne put down her cup on the saucer with a decided clink. "My answer to Lord Stark's nomination is yes."
"My lady?" croaked Maester Arden.
"Begin preparations for my departure for King's Landing." She picked up her brush. Her painting would just need a slice of mild sun through the trees, a glittering ripple in the waters, a soft suggestion of a kiss. Jeyne fingered her brooch. "I shall depart the soonest I can."
"My lady, you don't mean to sit on the Council of Regents –"
"But I do. I just told you," said Jeyne, and briskly tapped her fingers on the table. "If you are worried about my leisure time to find a husband, you have known my answer to that for more than a decade now, Maester Arden."
It was not enough of a worry for Maester Arden, it seemed, for his forehead was still wretchedly crumpled. "And the Council of Regents. Seven for the boy king. Men from greens and blacks both."
Jeyne smiled. "You need not worry about my being a regent myself, Maester Arden. After all, I learned from the – ah – most notable regents as a child."
When she was twelve, Jeyne descended from the Vale for the first time to attend a great tourney at King's Landing.
"I am not offended," she told Lord Yorbert Royce, the Lord Protector of the Vale. He was a broad greying man with a perpetual mild questioning look, and Jeyne had his dark hair.
Lord Royce turned his mild questioning eyes to her as their litter entered the city gates. "About what in particular, my lady?"
"About the invitation to the tourney of the king's marriage anniversary." Jeyne enunciated each word with proper care. "My half-sister is dead. There is a new queen, but my kin Rhaenyra is Princess of Dragonstone in her own right."
Lord Royce gave her a brief nod.
Jeyne did not know what he meant by that. Had she been learning well? Was it only an acknowledgment that she spoke? Maester Arden had said that a great mind was an inquiring mind.
"Is it any good," continued Jeyne, "being a kin to the Princess of Dragonstone?"
"Princess Rhaenyra will sit the Iron Throne one day," was all Lord Royce said. "And House Arryn had spoken for the king's claim to the throne once, my lady, when you were little."
Jeyne knew that. Lord Royce had gone in her stead. Lord Royce, her own kin. Was it any good, being a kin to Jeyne besides being Lord Protector of the Vale? Jeyne wanted to know. Jeyne wanted to come of age as soon as possible. She had been waiting for it as long as she could remember.
The curtains of their litter swayed heavily.
"Was it any good for Princess Rhaenys to be the Old King's kin?" Jeyne said. She kept her gaze on Lord Royce, even as each sway of the curtains swung beams of sun then shadow then sun then shadow across his face. "Was it any good for Princess Aerea? How about for Prince Aegon to be kin to King Maegor?"
The litter jolted to a halt. Lord Royce swept aside the curtain and smiled at Jeyne. She had his smile, she realised. Mild, and could mean anything and nothing.
"We are here, my lady," he said. "We shall answer your questions for your morning lessons tomorrow."
They did not have morning lessons the next day because Jeyne broke fast with King Viserys.
His Grace was a jovial man, and he seemed genuinely friendly when he told her, "Lady Arryn! I am told that you favour smoked salmon so I took the liberty to have a plate of it prepared for you," or "Oh, you paint, Lady Arryn? Do tell me, from where do you acquire your paints?" or "A Braavosi dressmaker is passing by the city, you see, Lady Arryn, and I was told she is also excellent with the purple dye. You should put in an order for a gown, my lady. I had drawn up a list of ladies, my dearest Rhaenyra amongst them, of course, to have their gowns made under the Red Keep's household expenses. Just for this special treat, Lady Arryn."
Jeyne decided that she liked the sound of "Lady Arryn," coming straight out of the king's mouth.
The next time that the lords of the Vale argued amongst themselves about inheritances or crop yields or tavern taxes, and barely considered what she had to say so that Jeyne had learned to make her voice loud and brisk, she fancied telling them, "I am the Lady Arryn. Straight from the king's mouth, I am the Lady Arryn and Lady Paramount of the Vale."
The breakfast with the king went on for half the morning, and so Jeyne was not able to speak with Lord Royce before his morning tea with Lord Manderly and several other guests.
Jeyne couldn't complain, though. For the first time in her life, she was able to walk around a garden by herself.
Ambling with a song book in hand, Jeyne admired the flowers which seemed brighter in colours, and especially tended to. She admired the sun which looked and felt different from the coldish sun of the Vale. She admired the air heavy with expectant celebration. Most of all, Jeyne admired being alone. No Lord Royce, no Maester Arden, no ladies and maids, no other lords of the Vale. Only her, only Jeyne.
Under an arching branch frothing with red and white blooms, Jeyne came upon another lone lady.
This lady looked a little older than Jeyne, with a sharp chin, sharper cheekbones, and arching brows with the sharpest peaks Jeyne had ever seen. They made the lady look forbidding and eternally unimpressed.
"You're reciting songs?" the lady said to Jeyne. "Not singing them?"
Jeyne did her best not to hide the little book by the folds of her gown. "Yes. It is good for practice. Of the voice. I need it."
The lady paused her stitching of a riding glove. "How would you need it, my lady?"
"I need a good commanding voice," said Jeyne. "When I come of age, I am to be Lady Paramount of the Vale and Warden of the East."
The lady's smile widened even as her sharp, sharp eyebrows arched. "Lady Jeyne Arryn."
The lady had still not offered Jeyne to sit beside her on the stone bench. In the Vale all of the people there scrambled to offer her a place by their side. They barely remembered what Jeyne had to say, though, even though she was sat near them.
Jeyne nodded once. "Yes. I am Lady Jeyne Arryn."
"I am Lady Sabitha Vypren. No one in particular as of yet." The lady laughed, and did another stitch on the riding glove. Her laugh was not as sharp as the rest of her, but round and full. "Just a girl pestering the armorers and masters of horse, I'm told. Although my lord uncle tells me that he has just made a betrothal for me."
"Your uncle," Jeyne said, running the heraldries through her head. "The Lord of Harrenhal."
"He tells me that my betrothed used to be Princess Rhaenyra's suitor." One of Lady Sabitha's brows raised itself. "Imagine the honour."
"Have you met him yet?" Jeyne found herself to be interested enough. "May I sit?"
"If you'd like to sit, then by all means." Lady Sabitha squinted at her stitches, then nodded to herself. "I met him yesterday. Lord Forrest Frey."
"I hear he is strong and gallant," said Jeyne, rather dubiously.
"We all hear plenty of things." Lady Sabitha paused in her stitching so that she could toss her thick tumble of hair over her shoulder. Jeyne couldn't decide what colour of hair it was. It seemed the dry brown of firewood at one moment, then the dry yellow of hay the next. But it wouldn't be proper to just take a strand between her fingers just so she could closely peer at it.
"I hear that maidens become lovely mysterious beings once they turn six and ten," Lady Sabitha went on. "I turned six and ten last moon's turn, and the only thing which sounds becoming to me is streaking past the streets on a horse."
Jeyne chuckled. "I cannot wait to turn six and ten."
Lady Sabitha looked at Jeyne with that unimpressed sharp face of hers. "To become a lovely mysterious being or to ride a horse hard?"
"To truly rule the Vale."
They met again two years later, under an elaborately carved arch on a wall during Princess Rhaenyra's wedding to Ser Laenor Velaryon.
Lady Frey was wearing her gown done by the Braavosi dressmaker. Purple silk was rippling down from its shoulders, which were as flat and severe as the shoulder plates of an armour, and a golden brooch in the shape of a heart was clasping the grey-lined purple folds of her bodice. She looked so disdainful under the arch, swirling a silver cup in hand, that Jeyne wanted to laugh.
"Lady Frey," Jeyne greeted her with a smirk, "I am pleased to see you well."
"And I am pleased to see you well, Lady Arryn." Lady Frey's eyebrows twitched. She did not even smooth her face into an impression of a smile. She truly did not like dancing. Jeyne wanted to laugh again. "And I suppose it pleases me that I come across as well."
"Are you not well, then?"
"I'm expected to dance. Of course I'm not well."
Jeyne smiled. "How about we ride tomorrow?"
"Do you know that you're the first to offer me such ever since I've arrived here?"
Jeyne took a sip of her mulled wine. "I hear that the Lady of the Crossing would rather ride than dance, and spent more time riding around the Twins than dancing during her wedding feast."
"We hear plenty of things," Lady Frey said, laughing her full and round laugh. "In this instance, though, what you heard is true."
They were companionably silent as they briefly sat on a bench and nibbled on an apple tart. Jeyne wondered what Lady Frey heard of her, or remembered of her. It wouldn't surprise her if it was the usual things people remembered of Jeyne: her favoured smoked salmon, her painting, and her favoured colour of rich blue.
Then Lady Frey said, "And I hear now that your voice has improved, Lady Arryn."
"Has it?" Jeyne could feel a smile on her lips.
That morning in the Red Keep's garden, under the airy fluttering shadows of the flowers, Lady Sabitha had alternately laughed and encouraged and poked at their respective accents as Jeyne read out loud the rest of the songs in her little book – that morning and all the mornings for the rest of their visit to King's Landing.
"I wouldn't say it has if it hasn't." Lady Frey shot her a look which clearly meant that Jeyne should stop being ridiculous. Jeyne wanted to laugh. "It's brisk," continued Lady Frey. "It's loud and clear. Well done."
Jeyne was rather pleased. "Thank you."
Lady Frey plucked off the one remaining cinnamon stick from a plate and offered it to Jeyne. "Here. I recall you mention looking forward to sugar and cinnamon. Unless you've liked them less in the last two years?"
Jeyne blinked at the cinnamon stick. She cleared her throat and accepted it. "No, I still like them," she told Lady Frey, feeling her cheeks lift up. What a wide smile she was feeling on her face.
Lady Frey laughed.
"I shall need this for the dancing." Jeyne chuckled around the cinnamon.
"I wish that I can say I'm shocked," Lady Frey said in her dry unimpressed tone that Jeyne chuckled again.
The king's brother, Prince Daemon, appealed to Jeyne for his dead wife's castle and lands.
It was fortunate that he had done so at this particular year. One of Jeyne's first acts the year she turned six and ten was to dismiss Prince Daemon Targaryen from the Vale.
"I see that you loved my vassal the Lady Royce well, Your Grace," Jeyne told him.
Prince Daemon coldly looked at her with his pale fish eyes. Behind her seat, Maester Arden shifted. All of the Seven Kingdoms knew how little the prince had loved Lady Royce and living with her in Runestone.
The prince was opening his mouth so Jeyne swept on. "Truly a pity that the Seven blessed you both with no child. If you only had a child by Lady Royce, Your Grace, then I can grant you regency of Runestone. Alas."
"I was Lady Royce's lawful husband." The prince looked irked, and he shifted restlessly on his feet.
"But what is a husband to a wife, unless bound by blood to her castle?" Jeyne smiled at him. "Your Grace has no child with Lady Royce to bind you by blood to Runestone." Pausing, Jeyne almost used the king and Queen Alicent as example, but it wouldn't do to use even as example a dead King Viserys. "Your Grace was King of the Narrow Sea, yes?"
"Yes," Prince Daemon said, flatly.
"Would you pass your kingdom to a wife not kin to you and with whom you have no child? Would you have passed your kingdom to Lady Royce?"
Prince Daemon continued staring at her.
Jeyne kept her gaze boring through the prince.
Later the king told her, with a weary shake of his head, "I do not blame you, Lady Arryn. Daemon has always needed a firm hand. I do not blame you. Let me have the Grand Maester draw up my sealed approval for my lady Arryn's rejection of Daemon's claim to Runestone."
Jeyne stepped out of the Red Keep with a satisfied little smile that day. She decided to make her brief visit to King's Landing even more worth it by purchasing new paints and painting paper.
The shop had low dark beams and the comforting smell of paper. Near the back, beside a tall stack of blank books favoured by the merchants and stewards, stood Lady Frey. Her sharp voice carried to where Jeyne was standing, huddled deep in her hood.
"No," Lady Frey was saying, in sharp staccatos. "No. No. Not this. Nor this. I specifically ordered oaken paper for my book. This is disappointing, Henry. Imagine riding all the way from the Twins and being disappointed like this."
The balding Henry was bowing deeply again and again. "Terribly, terribly sorry, your ladyship. There must've been a mistake. There must – ah, I'll look at the stacks some more. I must've – yes – must've overlooked – yes."
Jeyne kept her eyes on Lady Frey as she picked out her own paper. Lady Frey's thick hair was coiled inside a silver net, and her gown's shoulders were still reminiscent of an army commander's plate shoulders.
Jeyne had received a letter from Lady Frey for her sixteenth name day, and she had tucked it inside her song book. The letter's paper had been of excellent quality.
Smiling, Jeyne approached her and began, "So you have come."
Lady Frey turned, appearing a little surprised, before she saw that it was Jeyne. This close Jeyne could smell the thick earthy musk garlanding Lady Frey.
"I mentioned in my last letter I would," said Lady Frey.
So she did, Jeyne thought with some fondness. Lady Frey didn't say anything she didn't mean.
"I hear," said Jeyne, "that the Lady of the Crossing would rather wear mail than silk, and has strong-armed the master-of-arms to teach her how to wield weapons."
"We hear plenty of things," Lady Frey said with a laugh. "What you heard is true, Lady Arryn. And I've been hearing things about you, too. A certain thing about banishing the king's brother from the Vale."
"I said I could not wait to turn six and ten, did I not?"
"And you certainly did with a thunder, didn't you?" Lady Frey laughed her round and full laugh again. Jeyne felt her cheeks lift.
Henry scuttled back to Lady Frey. "I've found it, m'lady! Found it!" He pressed a thick little book on Lady Frey's hands and nervously twisted a lock of remaining hair as she opened it with a critical eye. Her golden brooch gleamed with each turn of a page.
"Very well," she announced. "You've found it, Henry."
All the while Lady Frey was handing over her coins and finishing her custom, Jeyne amused herself by figuring out which perfume Lady Frey was wearing. It had to come from one of the ships from Essos.
"I heard other things as well," Jeyne told her as they stepped out of the paper shop.
"What other things?" Lady Frey's right brow arched to a sharp peak, and the right corner of her lips tugged up. "You don't mind walking with me to a forge, do you, Lady Arryn?"
"No." Jeyne didn't. "I've heard that the Lady of the Crossing –" here Jeyne lowered her voice whilst still keeping it light – "would rather kiss women."
Lady Frey didn't falter in her steps. "We hear plenty of things. From where did you hear that?"
"I hear Sylvenna Sand is your favourite."
This time it was Lady Frey who lowered her voice. The look slanted at Jeyne was knowing. "Ah, but how did you hear of Sylvenna Sand of the House of Kisses, Lady Arryn."
Jeyne knew that she was caught.
She had wandered around the whore houses in her hood, and it gave her an unexpected leap in the chest when she had heard of a stray mutter about Sylvenna Sand. A whore from Dorne, paramour of another whore in the House of Kisses, and a whore who only entertained women and wrinkled her nose at men no matter how princely they were. Jeyne had shielded her face some more, had strained closer to hear more, her chest banging and the hand upon her upturned hood sweaty and trembling.
She had not felt this way at the various descriptions of her potential husbands. Even when they had visited the Eyrie on some pretense, paraded before Jeyne, she had not felt this excitement she felt on the mere mention of a woman kissing another woman.
The mutters spoke of Sylvenna Sand's women, amongst them a sharp-faced sharp-voiced willful noble lady from the riverlands.
Jeyne knew that she was caught. She smiled at Lady Frey.
A grin slowly uncurled on Lady Frey's lips. "I see."
They smiled and smiled at each other, and after a pause, Jeyne said nonchalantly, "Why are we going to a forge?"
They resumed walking. "I'm fetching a shield I had made for myself," said Lady Frey.
"Would you fancy a ride in the afternoon?"
"Why not. You always know my answer to riding." Lady Frey gestured at the forge. "Do you still like the kingswood? We could ride there."
Jeyne chuckled as they stepped in to the forge. "You always know my answer to the kingswood's sun and flowers."
The door of the Two Crowns bursts open as Jeyne brings a spoonful of mushroom soup to her lips.
"Old Sylva," a voice says, sharp and huskier than Jeyne remembers, but still a voice she will always recognise. "I see your custom is as flowing as ever."
"Not our grain store, more's the pity," the innkeeper replies. "Fewer bandits, though. My ladyship is to thank, they tell me."
The full and round laugh draws nearer, buoyed by the heavy thuds of leather boots on the rushes. "You're right."
Jeyne replaces her spoon in her soup, puts her fingers around the steaming bowl, and turns to the lady with a smile. "So you have come."
Lady Sabitha's shield thunks on the wooden table as she sits beside Jeyne. "So you have come," she tells Jeyne, the edges of her voice curving a bit like her laugh.
The shield on the table is of metal edges and darkest wood, and upon the wood is a golden heart in broad and sure strokes. The paint is faded in some places. It has not been retouched since the last time they met, during the Lord of Harrenhal's third wedding.
The two of them greeted each other with a kiss, shrouded by the looming ruins of the castle and the rippling of the Gods' Eye Lake, the rainbow of tents' colours almost gem-like in the setting sun. Jeyne tightened her arms around Lady Sabitha's shoulders and Lady Sabitha pressed her golden heart brooch on Jeyne's palm, still warm from Lady Sabitha's own hand and chest.
Jeyne painted the shield then, in between feasts and tourneys. When she removed her clapped hands over Lady Sabitha's eyes, Lady Sabitha knelt over the shield in a hush, and her voice was round and soft when she murmured words against Jeyne's lips. Jeyne loved that. She loved those words. She loved snuffing out the candles in her tent, too, the shield safe and drying on a chest in a corner, Jeyne's shoulders digging on the blanket and her back arching and her toes seizing as she dragged and pulled at Lady Sabitha's hair.
The first time Jeyne heard the new name people call her, she laughed and wrote to Lady Sabitha: "Maiden of - -, they call me. Not quite. You and I both know: not quite."
In this inn at the crossroads, with its plain ceiling and bare walls and steaming bowls of soup, Lady Sabitha's face reveals to Jeyne bold laugh lines. Undoubtedly older than the girl who once told Jeyne, in a sharp jagged voice, how she marvelled at Jeyne not deriding her of her love for arms and armour. Undoubtedly older than the lady who confessed to dousing herself with rich perfume after visiting a brothel in the middle of the day. She has a mailed elbow resting on the side of the table now, and her hair is in a long braid on her back.
Jeyne reaches out a hand and dusts away the snow from the mail on Lady Sabitha's arm. "Are you taking care of yourself? Fighting bandits must be hungry work."
"I gnaw on their bones," Lady Sabitha laughs.
"What are you, a wolf?"
"No. But I'm Lady Sabitha Vypren."
Jeyne chuckles, her fingers dawdling in their dusting of snow.
Lady Sabitha shifts her arm so that her fingers tangle with Jeyne's. Their hands recognise each other, through some calluses wrought over the decade, and hold tight to each other under the table, in the space between their laps.
"I hear," says Jeyne, "that the Lady of the Crossing would rather kill men than court them."
"Dowager Lady of the Crossing," Lady Sabitha corrects. "And I do kill bandits."
There is a wild leap in Jeyne's chest again. Of course. She did not forget that.
"We hear plenty of things," continues Lady Sabitha with a quirk of her brow. Her thumb caresses Jeyne's knuckles. "I hear that the Lady of the Vale will reside in King's Landing for quite some time."
"I have never thought that I would be regent to someone," says Jeyne.
"And I've always wondered who has more freedom." Lady Sabitha briefly squeezes Jeyne's hand. "A lady ruling in her own right, or a lord's mother?"
"Shortly I will also be Lady Regent," Jeyne muses.
"And my son is the lord of his father's castles." After a pause, Lady Sabitha adds, "So here we are."
"Here were are," Jeyne agrees. She briefly squeezes back. "I have a new painting. I have brought it with me."
"May I see it?" Lady Sabitha asks, her right eyebrow and the right corner of her lips tugged up.
Jeyne lowers her voice. "It is in my room. In the third storey."
Lady Sabitha's sharp eyebrows smoothen with her voice. "In an inn, Jeyne? I know what that flush means," she teases. "As I said, here we are."
Here they are in the inn at the crossroads, Jeyne a lady paramount at the helm of a new age and Lady Sabitha a formidable lady dowager, now women fully grown, by the banks of a different kind of freedom.
"You are biting your lower lip, Sabitha. I know what that means." Jeyne feels her warmed cheeks lift up. "So here we are."
fin